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"Paul Loeb brings hope for a better world in a time when we so urgently need it."—Millard Fuller, founder, Habitat for Humanity

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"I stayed up half the night reading Soul of a Citizen, finding it a beautiful and morally transcendent work that speaks in gentle words directly to the heart. The new edition is magnificent. "
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Entries by Paul Loeb

Remember the World Trade Organization, which slipped into the shadows after massive Seattle protests in 1999? The same day last week that Congress initially blocked fast track authority for approval of the TPP trade agreement, the House voted to overturn rules requiring country-of-origin labeling for meat. Those supporting the latter...

This week's FCC action should bring a long-delayed victory for net neutrality. It's an important victory, without which the online world that we've come to take for granted would risk being auctioned off to the highest bidder. But this victory might never have happened without an unlikely political coalition a...

We live in a time fraught with bad news. From the toll of violence and poverty to the escalating march of climate change, every week brings temptations to despair. Hope may actually be more beleaguered in the wake of a president who...

We don't have to be perfect saints or know every answer to every question to begin working for a more just world. We can be wounded or hesitant ourselves, sometimes profoundly so. In one of people's favorite essays from my newly updated political hope anthology The Impossible Will...

Is the biggest hurdle on climate change outright denial? Or is it the sense that of being overwhelmed and too late, that there's nothing we can do? As K.C. Golden writes in an excerpt from my newly updated political hope anthology The Impossible Will Take a Little While,...

Paul Hawken has long been one of my heroes. He was the press coordinator for Martin Luther King's historic Selma-to-Montgomery march. He turned a small Boston store into Erewon Trading Company, one of the largest natural foods wholesalers in America. His book The Ecology of Commerce inspired the founder of...

Paul Hawken has long been one of my heroes. He was the press coordinator for Martin Luther King's historic Selma-to-Montgomery march. He turned a small Boston store into Erewon Trading Company, one of the largest natural foods wholesalers in America. His book The Ecology of Commerce inspired the founder of...

You've heard it again and again. "My vote doesn't matter," students too often say. Others complain that politicians are "all the same and all corrupt." How do we overcome this cynical resignation and encourage students to register and vote despite their conviction...

It seemed like the afterthought in the payroll tax cut extension fight, a small consolation prize to the Republicans on what should have been the easiest of bi-partisan votes. But the two-month clock is now ticking on whether Obama will approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada's environmentally disastrous tar...

Did you know Obama's health care bill contained a $20 billion a year tax on the richest Americans? I didn't until I stumbled onto a mention of this the other day, although writing about politics is my life and I knew enough to be angry at the gutting...

Will Obama ever hold the Republicans accountable for their reckless and destructive actions? No matter how outrageous their demands, he keeps giving them legitimacy, first resisting, then compromising, then praising the result as bipartisanship. He's forgotten the basic lesson of negotiation -- you don't hand everything over before you start,...

It's easy for mountaintop removal to seem abstract to those who don't live in coal country. I just saw the powerful documentary The Last Mountain, about mountaintop removal, and it brings the issue home like no other portrayal that I've seen. I've followed the issue through friends active...

Following the weather is beginning to feel like revisiting the Biblical plagues. Tornadoes rip through Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma -- even Massachusetts. A million acres burn in Texas wildfires. The Army Corps of Engineers floods 135,000 acres of farmland and three million acres of bayou country to save...

It's tempting to expect perfection from those we admire, but we romanticize lone heroes at our peril. A few years before one-time supporter Jon Krakauer challenged the truthfulness of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, a professor asked me my thoughts on using the book as a reading...

I'm glad you've opposed the attacks on Wisconsin's public workers, but you need to do more. You need to go there and speak out, or at least speak out again and more strongly, because Americans need to understand what's at stake, and those who are...

Does Olympia Snowe really want to be the target of waves of anonymous attack ads in support of some conservative primary challenger? Wouldn't a retiring George Voinovich prefer to leave some shards of our democracy off-limits to being sold to the highest bidder? Could John McCain remember why McCain-Feingold was...

I admit it. 2008 was a whole lot more fun. We were riding a wave of change. We had the political momentum. We reached into states and districts we thought we could win and turned them with our energy and commitment. It felt like we just might be launching a...